|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
|||
 |
THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE "MISSISSIPPI BURNING" MURDERS Q&A WITH FILMMAKERS AND FAMILY MEMBERS OPENING WEEKEND Filmmakers Micki Dickoff and Tony Pagano gained unprecedented access to Killen, following him from shortly after his indictment through his trial. For the first time, the film captures the outspoken views of a Klan member charged with a civil rights murder and takes viewers on a journey into the mindset of a man who still feels the murders were justified as "self-defense" of a way of life. Dickoff, an Emmy award-winning filmmaker and social activist, was haunted by the slayings of the three civil rights workers, kids only a few years older than she was at the time. “I wanted to register voters too, but my father wouldn’t let me go. He grew up in Mississippi in the only Jewish family in his town,” she explains. “The unpunished murders helped shape my politics and my art. When Ben Chaney called me about making a film, I jumped at the chance.” Teaming with Pagano, an award-winning director of photography, they began shooting on the 40th anniversary of the killings in Neshoba County, Mississippi where the three civil rights workers were slain. Pagano makes his feature directorial debut on NESHOBA. “When Micki introduced me to Andrew Goodman’s mother Carolyn, I knew I needed to tell this story,” says Pagano. “Micki’s passion for the truth and Carolyn’s passion for justice were doubly inspiring.” Through intimate and surprisingly candid interviews with Killen, the families of the victims, and black and white Neshoba County citizens with diverse points of view, the film explores whether the prosecution of one unrepentant Klansman constitutes justice and whether healing and reconciliation are possible without telling the unvarnished truth. As Dickoff puts it, “James, Andy and Mickey, and hundreds of others in the civil rights struggle, died so Barack Obama could be elected President. Their legacy is our heritage. We must never forget them or the “price of freedom.” We hope our film reminds us how far we’ve come in race relations and how far we still need to go.”
WINNER: BEST DOCUMENTARY WINNER: BEST DOCUMENTARY WINNER: BEST DOCUMENTARY WINNER: BEST MISSISSIPPI FILM WINNER: BEST HUMAN RIGHTS FILM WINNER: SPECIAL JURY AWARD
Press materials are available at: firstrunfeatures.com/neshoba_press.html For more information please visit: neshobafilm.com |
|
|
In 1964, a mob of Klansmen murdered civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in the small Mississippi county of Neshoba. These young men, two Jews from New York and an African-American from Mississippi, were in the Deep South helping register African-American voters during what became known as “Freedom Summer.” Although the Klansmen bragged about what they did, no one was held accountable until 2005, when the State indicted the mastermind of the killings, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old Baptist preacher and notorious racist. 
